Zen Master Eido Roshi on the Benefits of Meditation

Zen Master Eido Roshi

August 21, 2013

Eloise: My understanding of meditation is that the benefits are that it can help people through stress and help them get a lot better connected to their center and their authentic self. Can you tell me what benefits of meditation you’ve experienced personally? Eido: The Zazen we can do together with friends without talking. Sometimes, without talking for 7 days but strange enough, there is beautiful communication and after 7 days of retreat is over, we feel as if our neighbor is a lifelong friend. And this is without talking, without email, without telephone, without anything…just simply quiet sitting and beautiful dialogue from heart to heart and this is the benefit, if you call it “benefit”, I don’t want to use that word *laughs*. Anyway, in my case, I get up every morning at 5 o’clock and chanting lin zai zen Buddhist traditions, sutras for about half an hour and then another 45 minutes Zazen, this is everyday, no Sunday, no Saturday and no holiday. And it’s been like this for… my goodness…far before you are born. *laughs*. I think before that, let me say, I used to be a very… how do you say…easily to be irritated or become angry so with the small matters. But nowadays, the irritation is practically none and irritation, impatience is gone. I would not say zero but practically zero. Many other emotional things is back to normal. Back to normal means ‘follow the universal principle not human egocentric… another way to say is to consider this being is separated being and it’s me’. As long as we carry that concept, no matter how many years you do Zazen jealousy, envy, anger will accompany you. But the “benefit” of Zazen is penetration of the breath into deeper part of our body somehow, I cannot explain but somehow it happens that way.